Jeremiah 2:12-37

Argumentative Questionings

Jer 2:14-37

This portion of the Book of Jeremiah is filled with penetrating questions. From the fourteenth verse to the end of the chapter inquiries are showered upon us. It would appear as if these verses were full of challenges and impeachments and accusations, subtly and delicately conveyed in the form of interrogation. Where there is not a positive statement made, there is a positive incrimination in the very form of the inquiry. These are what may be called argumentative questions. They are not inquiries asking simply which is the way, what is the hour of the day, what is the name of this or that individual or object, innocent, pithless, all but needless inquiries: the questions are constructed upon a basis of argument and impeachment. What wonderful things can be done in a question! Is there any department of rhetoric or human utterance in which so much can be done with so little? It is difficult to print a question. Oftentimes the pith of the inquiry is in the tone of the inquirer. Here we are face to face with argumentative interrogations, and the interrogator is looking at us and looking into us and looking through us; it is a cross-examination of spears and darts and two-edged swords. In some places argumentative questions are deprecated; it is ruled by the authority of the occasion that such questions cannot be put, because they are too detailed and argumentative. In other places argumentative questions are constructed for the purpose of forcing the hand of those who for the time being hold the secret of policy and the destiny of empire; but the assemblies are very careful about the form in which the questions are put. Who shall challenge God's way of questioning? When he asks a question he pronounces a judgment; when he thrusts an interrogation upon an unwilling witness he delivers a verdict and a sentence.

Let us study the verses with these explanations in view. Take, for example, the fourteenth verse:

"Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he spoiled?" ( Jer 2:14 )

"The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his lane, waste: his cities are burned without inhabitants" ( Jer 2:15 ).

That comes of going from home, leaving sacred discipline, taking life into one's own hand, assuming the mastership of one's own fortune and destiny. Woe betide the man who goes beyond the bounds which God has fixed! Immediately outside those bounds the lion waits, or the plague, or the pestilence, or the pit hardly hidden but deep immeasurable. Luther said: Who would paint a picture of the present condition of the Church, let him paint a young woman in a wilderness or in some desert place; and round about her let him figure hungry lions whose eyes are glaring upon her and whose mouths are open to devour her substance and her beauty. Is the Church in a much better condition today? That is the natural condition of the Church. The Church always challenges the lion, tempts the devourer, excites the passions of evil men. When an evil generation tolerates the Church, applauds its dogmas, and flatters its ministry, it is because that Church has surrendered her prerogatives and trampled, her functions in the dust. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. That is not a historical statement limited chronologically; it is the eternal truth: wherever there is light it must fight the darkness; wherever there is holiness it must judge all evil, and make bad men afraid, and set them on the defensive, and extort from them the most vehement denunciations. Beware of a fictitious peace; beware of the flattery of bad men it is because you are turning your eyes away from their false weights and scales and measuring-rods; it is because you wink when you pass by their revels and their orgies: it is because you are deaf when you hear their evil speeches and their cruel blasphemies. Know that the Church of the living God is alive, and is fulfilling her destiny, when ail round about her are men more cruel than ravenous beasts. Israel, the homeborn slave, who ought to have walked arm-in-arm with the son of the house, left the precincts of the family and plunged into the way of lions.

In the seventeenth verse is another illustrative instance:

"Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee by the way?" ( Jer 2:17 )

Ah, that is the point of the sword! Is not all ruin suicide? To be murdered must indeed be awful, but to have put the knife to one's own heart, to have torn down the divine image from the human soul, to have choked the throat that was praying, or to have forced out the prayer by some profanity, and to know at the end that this is our own doing, surely this will bow down a man in the day of judgment, will bitterly and heavily afflict him in the hour of self-examination: he will not be able to say, See what a rent this dagger made, or what a thrust was given by that cruel hand; he cannot point to the gashes upon him and trace them to spears of enemies: when he looks upon his whole condition he will be compelled to say I did it; this is my work; this is the fruit of my own sin; this comes of the policy that has in it no element of godliness and no gleam of virtue. Is there not a cause? Are not things related? Do not events belong to one another by primary and secondary sequences, often difficult to trace in all their outgoings and contact with the rest of this mystery which we call life? Do not our dead selves spring up in sudden and frightful resurrection when we least expected the reappearance? Does not the spectre come to the feast and sit down at the right hand and make the right side cold? or sit immediately opposite and dare us to drink the foaming wine and enjoy the sweet viands? Is there not a cause? Can a man sow, and not reap? Can a man fight against God, and be at peace with the universe? Can a planet detach itself from its centre and create an action of its own that shall be in rhythm with the march of the heavens? The suicide cannot be hidden; the blood marks cannot be obliterated.

"And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?" ( Jer 2:18 ).

Apply this to life, and who can live? Nevertheless, we must not lower the standard. Although we cannot always so control circumstances as to realise an ideal character, yet the ideal itself must be held up and magnified, and nothing must be allowed to becloud the glory of that idealism. But were it to be applied to life, the city would be revolutionised, houses of business would be opened no more, commerce would be driven into the sea and be buried in unpitied oblivion. The city is full of plagues. Life is thick-sown with snares and gins and traps. Our prayers have in them an accent of worldliness; our adoration sometimes furtively turns its eyes away from the uplifted majesty and throne of heaven, and fixes its longing gaze on trees forbidden and fields proscribed. Who can live? "Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe:" forbid that I should lower my ideal in order to excuse my shortcomings.

Now comes a solemn appeal a repetition, indeed, of what is given in the seventeenth verse

"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts" ( Jer 2:19 ).

This is the appeal of experience. In detailing the so-called evidences of Christianity, never forget how much experience contributes towards the illumination of difficult doctrine and high demand. "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee" shall show thee how far thou hast got wrong: the devil himself shall turn round upon thee, and face to face shall laugh at thee as a fool. Surely that is the hardest lot of all! He came to us like a white angel, clothed with light, and accommodated his voice to our hearing, and spoke to us musically and fascinatingly, and promised us life, liberty, almost godhead; we put out our hands, and took the forbidden fruit, and he lured us away mile after mile, and when he got us safely into stony places, where the great rocks frowned upon us and the hollow caverns seemed filled with sounds of mockery, he then broke out into a broad never-to-be-forgotten laugh of mockery, and told us we were fools! We know it. No man ever yet was honest to himself after doing that which was evil without saying that he had committed two evils: he had forsaken the right, and done the wrong; he had given up the fountain, and made himself a leaking cistern; he had turned away from the light, and had been condemned to carry the burden of darkness. Let the heart speak; let real life-experience be called into the witness-box, and be sworn on this matter. What comes of vice? The answer is, Hell! That is the universal answer: it is not a reply which admits of modification; but when reality takes the place of fiction, it shall be said again and again, "The wages of sin is death." No man can leave God, and live. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me," To turn away from him who is the living One is to turn to death.

We read that Israel had become a "degenerate plant." The Lord says:

"Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" ( Jer 2:21 ).

The questions still roll on, the interrogations fall from heaven with crushing power, the most mocking of all we find in the twenty-eighth verse: "Where are thy gods that thou hast made thee?" The Lord said in the twenty-seventh verse, "In the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us;" the cowards will yet come back again; they who have mocked me shall pray to me: but I will say to them in their prostration, "Where are thy gods that thou hast made thee?" That is the attribute of a false god, that he always forsakes his worshippers in trouble. What will our gods do for us if their names be Money, Fortune, Fame, Popularity, Luck, Chance, Success, Selfishness? They will not bear the stress of hard weather; they have no objection to laugh with us in a sunny hour, but they are useless when the wind blows from all the points of the compass, and the horizon charges itself with threatening thunders. Only truth can stand all tempests and all judgment. Christ says he will be with us even unto the end of the world; the sacred voice of the unseen Comforter says, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." The characteristic of idols is that they fall away when they are most wanted; the characteristic of Christ is that he is nearest to us when we need him most. Who can abide the day of the divine mockery? Who can stand before divine contempt? Surely there is no passage so terrible in all Holy Writ as the one which says that God will laugh at the calamity of the wicked, and mock when their fear cometh. These are words that bear no paraphrase; they affright us; they overwhelm us; they extort from us the cry, My soul, come not thou into that secret!

Finally, it is good for us to hear the divine questioning; it is healthy for us to submit ourselves quietly to the criticism of God. He will not ask questions that he can avoid asking that would give us pain or afflict us with humiliation; when he comes with the surgical knife it is that he may only amputate that which is mortified or useless; when he sits in judgment upon us it is only that he may take away the dross; when he burns us it is that he may test the gold of our nature and prove our quality. The questions are not always in words; the divine inquiries may be in events, in those mysterious occurrences which we designate by the name of Providence: the child is taken away, and the bereavement is a question; the property is all gone so that the rich man becomes poor, and the poverty is an inquiry; all the stratagem, and wit, and cunning, and skill of the old energetic time forsake the fruitful, fertile mind, so that he who was wise in counsel is dumb and without resource, and his speechlessness, his infertility of mind, is a question. A man should puncture himself with many a "Why is this?" "How is this?" The more we examine ourselves the less God will have to examine us. Spare not the judicial interrogation; it may bring a hopeful death the death which precedes true life. When God asks us questions, may we be able to hide ourselves in Christ. His Cross is the answer to the questionings of the law. His righteousness is the answer to the impeachment of outraged virtue. His sacrifice is the answer to sin. His priesthood is the reply to Satan.